Ted Lasso Season 4 Review – A 0-0 Draw In Lackluster Continuation

Hollywood can’t leave well enough alone, eh? Ted Lasso wrapped up the story in three seasons, but the popularity of the Apple TV show ensured there would always be a push for Season 4. Well, it’s here, and it feels like how Portugal played at the 2026 FIFA World Cup – a whole lot of stars passing sideways and doing nothing, while leaving everybody wondering what went wrong.

See, the entire premise of Ted Lasso Season 4 is for Jason Sudeikis’ beloved coach to return to AFC Richmond to oversee the newly launched women’s football team. The show addresses the elephant in the room – a man coaching the women’s side – by the second episode, but it doesn’t do too much to justify its narrative choice. The end of the story is telegraphed here, though if it is what I think it is, it’s a tad patronizing to Tanya Reynolds’ character, Alice Chilton.

Look, the reality is this: There’s still a major gulf both in pay and appeal between men’s and women’s football around the world. However, the scripts for Ted Lasso Season 4 feel like they were written about two decades ago in terms of how they treat the topic. The 2019 edition of the FIFA Women’s World Cup was watched by more than one billion people, while women’s football continues to explode both in popularity and influence – especially in England. As it stands, it’s in the best shape it’s ever been in. Could it be better? Absolutely, but it’s a far cry from the total bush league approach presented in Ted Lasso.

It’s almost as if the writers didn’t want to let reality get in the way of a zero-to-hero story. They needed to repeat the formula of how Ted took a bunch of hopeless losers to glory – but with women this time. The problem with this is that it’s disingenuous to anybody who has actually paid attention to the developments of what’s happening in the sport. Of course, there are nuggets of truth here, such as how women are often overlooked for jobs, how sexism still runs rampant in society, and how women’s football doesn’t get the same funding as the men’s side. Yet all of these points could have been covered without having to close your eyes to the truth of the progress around you.

This season also isn’t aided by the fact that Ted Lasso refuses to evolve beyond what was already there. Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) struggles with her work-life balance, Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) and Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) are still in the will-they-won’t-they dance, and Ted is still the “oh, gosh, golly” optimist who needs to unite a fractured team and make them believe in themselves. Okay, great – so what? This has all been covered in the prior three seasons, and many fans grew tired of the formula by then. So, what’s the difference here? After watching four episodes, I don’t really know. It’s déjà vu.

It’s difficult to hate on Ted Lasso because of the sentimentality and sweet message at the center of it, and we definitely need more shows like this and less of the cynical garbage pumped out. That said, it’s important to be honest and admit that Season 4 is just a derivative of what’s been done before. The new characters feel like clones of previous ones or borderline insulting stereotypes, and there’s not really enough here to justify the return to AFC Richmond. If this were a movie sequel, Ted Lasso Season 4 would be straight-to-DVD.

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Ted Lasso Season 4 premieres exclusively on Apple TV+ on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, with its first episode, “Home.”